And one from the college ranks: Draft pick Andrew MacWilliam from North Dakota.

O’Byrne — who had trouble with Tampa police in 2008 — is expected in town on Thursday. He’ll most likely be the big guy offering defensive support for the spry John-Michael Liles or perhaps ultimately the speedy Jake Gardiner down the line.

“He’s going to be one of our eight defencemen. He’s not going to come in here and take over the defensive core,” Nonis said of O’Byrne. “He’s a defensive defenceman. We feel he can play with good players. He can play with John-Michael Liles, with a Jake Gardiner, a Mike Kostka. Those are the most likely pairings.”

O’Byrne’s numbers are not impressive, but other parts of his game are. He’s big, at six-foot-five and 234 pounds. In 300 career games, he has four goals and 37 assists and is a minus-23. But he also has 363 penalty minutes. Some from fighting, which will please Carlyle, and some from ill-timed penalties, which won’t please Carlyle.

The cost was a fourth-round pick for O’Byrne, an unrestricted free agent this summer.

“I had a feeling something would happen but you’re always surprised when it happens,” said O’Byrne.

“Toronto is a team right in the mix. I’m glad to be joining the team. From my days in Montreal I always enjoyed playing in Toronto. Look forward to getting there.”

He also has some personal baggage — an arrest for purse snatching — that those who know him say stem from his desire to protect his teammates. In 2008, he was charged with grand theft after an incident in which he was accused of stealing a purse in a Tampa bar. The charges were dropped after he apologized to the victim and agreed to do community service in Canada.

What emerged later painted him in a sympathetic light as a guy sticking up for his teammates. He told reporters he grabbed the purse to get the cell phone inside so he could erase photos of his teammates they didn’t want posted to social media sites.

“We were comfortable with him as a player and person,” said Nonis. “We have 12 games left. We wanted to make sure we were in a position where we weren’t short on defence.”

While O’Byrne should help right away — his 19 games of playoff experience will help a blueline bereft of much post-season experience — MacWilliam is more of a long-term project. A seventh-round pick in 2008, MacWilliam is six-foot-two, 230 pounds and was captain of the North Dakota Fighting Sioux.

“He’s a big stay-at-home guy. He’s a Mark Fraser kind of a guy, an open-ice hitter” Nonis said of MacWilliam. “We think he’s going to fit in very well. Not sure how long it will take him to get up, he might get a look relatively quick.”

Nonis spent a great deal of time explaining the ramifications of the two players who didn’t come to the Leafs: goalies Miikka Kiprusoff and Roberto Luongo.

Nonis spoke with Kiprusoff, who ultimately turned down the Leaf offer of a contract extension to come and mentor James Reimer.

“Personal issues. He has a new baby . . . he has other things on his mind,” Nonis said of Kiprusoff. “To his credit he didn’t want to take a contract extension and come to Toronto without being fully committed and engaged and I appreciated the heads up early in the day as opposed to possibly making a deal and having it not work out.”

With Kiprusoff eying retirement, the Leafs focused on Luongo but didn’t want to part with a player off their roster while taking on a contract of Luongo’s size. He has nine years left on the deal with a cap-hit of $9.3 million.

Luongo himself held a news conference in Vancouver lamenting the size of his contract — “it sucks” he said — and wished he could tear it up. Cory Schneider is the Canucks No. 1 goalie.

“We weren’t in a position to make a trade that we were satisfied with in terms of assets that would be expended and impact on our cap,” said Nonis of Luongo. “With Miikka it would have been a different story in terms of length and term and the amount of money we thought we would have to pay.”

Nonis was then left to say he had confidence in Reimer and Scrivens all along even though he admits to going after some high profile goaltending help.

“I know there was a big deal about goaltending. There always has been in this marketplace,” said Nonis. “We always said if we could get some veteran presence to help these guys along and give them experience and tips it would have been an ideal situation.

“We’re happy with the goaltending. We weren’t trying to move one out. It was our desire to add to that group. These two have earned the right to play. If you look at what (Reimer) has done this year, he has played very, very well.”

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